Vignettes

About Vignettes

The Vignettes project is an experiment in designing Flash games with an educational bent with Multi-Touch technology in mind. I have tried to give a sampling of different types of games, skills and educational levels. This project started with an eye for Special Needs children specifically after working with a child who is autistic for the last few years. However, as I dug in I expanded the breadth of the project to include non-special needs children as well. My hope is that a child might find the games fun, but challenging and would learn something along the way.

Angles

This game is specifically for teenagers learning about angles and geometry, though younger may be interested in playing. Thus, the target age is High School: 15-18 years old. The digital game board would be set up similar to an air hockey table or soccer field. On the two ends would be two towers with a gun on the top. The gun launches a puck or ball toward the other person’s tower at some angle (determined by the player). Each tower would be a semicircle, centered along either edge of the “field” with 3 targets (1 facing the other person directly, the other two at 45 degree angles – something like this: \ __ / ). The goal is to hit the other person’s 3 targets before the other person hits yours. The only defense you have is 3 walls that you can set up at the beginning of the game to defend your tower.

Matching Mayhem

This is a group finding/pattern recognition game. The players are given a “sea” of people with different attributes and are asked to match the “twins”. Players will race against the clock, varying degrees of difficult, varying numbers of twins, varying numbers of people, etc. This game is meant for children in elementary and middle school depending on the difficulty level.

Begins With

A game with four pictures, three random and one that starts with a certain letter (a for instance). The game tells you to find the object that begins with the letter a. Twenty-six randomized screens walk you through each letter of the alphabet. According to Angie Likens, this is a stage in literacy – matching sounds with letters. So the child might say all 4 options out loud (cat, apple, flower, dog) – and they would have to match the written letter a with the sound of the world “apple”. This game is meant for young elementary school aged children.